Subject: WG Review: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (xmpp)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 16:00:06 -0400

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Applications Area.  
The IESG has not made any determination as yet.

The following Description was submitted, and is provided for 
informational purposes only:

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (xmpp)
-------------------------------------------------

 Current Status: Proposed Working Group

Description of Working Group:

XMPP is an open, XML-based protocol for near real-time extensible
messaging and presence. It is the core protocol of the Jabber Instant
Messaging and Presence technology which is currently deployed on
thousands of servers across the Internet and is used by millions of
people worldwide. The XMPP working group shall adapt the XMPP for use as
an IETF Instant Messaging and Presence technology.

The working group will use XMPP (as described in draft-miller-xmpp-*) as
the basis of its work. The final specifications will be consistent with
both the requirements given in RFC2779 and the interoperability details
in the final version of the CPIM specification (draft-ietf-impp-cpim).

A major goal of the working group will be to extend the current XMPP
protocols to provide finished support for RFC 2779-compliant security
mechanisms, including authentication, privacy, access control and
end-to-end as well as hop-by-hop message security.
Mandatory-to-implement security mechanisms will be specified as needed
in order to guarantee secure protocol interoperability.

The working group shall also add support for internationalization and
localization to XMPP.

Instant messaging differs from email primarily by requiring relatively
short delivery latency guarantees and, typically, less robust transport
service. In addition, instant messaging includes the notion of presence
information so authorized users can determine if their correspondents
are available.

BCP 41 will be the basis for working group consideration of the
transport implications of the XMPP design with respect to network
congestion.

Although not encouraged, non-backwards-compatible changes to the basis
specifications will be acceptable if the working group determines that
the changes are required to meet the group's technical objectives and
the group clearly documents the reasons for making them.